Monday, 17 February 2014

On posh cowboys, and other subject-specific heros

Peter Godfrey-Smith writes in Theory
and Reality that scientists love Karl Popper because they enjoy the image
he paints of them as "hard-headed cowboys, out on the range, with a
stradivarius tucked into their saddlebags."

I remember well when I was scraping pennies as a grad student by
invigilating at undergraduate exams, and I would while away the
boring hours by playing a game with myself of 'spot the discipline'. The exams
would often be mixed, you see, with groups of biochemists taking papers
alongside students of french, physics, media studies and so on. The challenge
would be to see if I could guess what paper a student or group of students was
taking by looking at what they were wearing. The game was fun because I was so
often correct and I developed a finely tuned ability to sort undergraduates
into their respective cliques in this way, but also because it was interesting
to ponder on the significance of the cultural markers I identified.

Suits, but shinier than economics, occasional touches of flair such
as brightly dyed hair to indicate maverick streak.

History

Suits, but more conservative and tweedy, frequent waistcoats.

I may be a few years out of date here, but that
depends on if/how fast these things change. I wonder to what extent these things are specific to the UK? Additions/corrections to my schema are welcome!

Philosophers?What about philosophers? Well Philosophers-of-something dress just like their
of-something.

Philosophers of cognitive science dress like psychologists. Andy
Clark, he’s smartly dressed, but a bit maverick, like Susan Greenfield. Philosophers
of biology are casual and outdoorsy. People who do formal stuff might be smart
if its real-world application stuff, or dusty and austistic-dressing if its
super abstract. Core analytic philosophers are smart but in the tweedy way, so I
guess they’re channeling the inner-historian.

What does a discipline’s uniform say about it? Well I
think that scientists express their level of empiricism via the practicality of
their clothing. This sounds commonsensical, except it isn’t as pragmatic as
geologists wear goretex while on fieldwork in Siberia. They wear the goretex wherever
they are, and even if they never do fieldwork. It’s a cultural thing. A physicist
doesn’t need climbing shoes, but his shoes tell the world that he does applied maths – he’s not some crazy
geeky formal maths type. Unless he is, in which case his clothes will scream at
you ‘im on a higher plane, I’m way above mirrors and not having your mum buy
your clothes, and having interpersonal skills.’

For non-scientists, the uniform is a good barometer of how
paranoid the discipline is about its status relative to the other disciplines.
Economists wear suits because they want the bankers to take them seriously.
Psychologists wear suits because they want everyone to take them seriously.
They’re like ‘look, we do maths n stuff, just like the economists, and you take
them seriously, right?!’

I would wager that Godfrey-Smith’s claim about the typical
scientist’s self-image is rather subject –specific. Dawkins can probably see
himself out on the range, for sure. But I suspect the average psychologist, or
economist, or mathematician would shrink at being compared to a posh cowboy. They have their own
sartorial heros, no doubt.